Fitting The Content Into Your Context

A really cool principle that I’m revisiting as I’m going into a consulting swap day.

On this episode Russell talks about why he can’t relate to people with information overload. Here are some of the amazing things you will hear in today’s episode:

How Brandon Poulin helped Russell see what he’s been doing all along, by saying something profound.

How Russell is able to separate context and content to only use things that apply at that moment, and shelve everything else.

And why it’s important to know what context you need in your content in order to avoid information overload.

So listen here to find out what strategy Russell uses to be able to retain all information, but only use the stuff within the correct context of what he’s doing.

Full Episode Transcript

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to a very special episode of Marketing Secrets podcast.

Hey everyone, I’m actually laying in bed right now, I’m about to go to bed and I’ve had an amazing last two days. We’ve got our entire development team out here, which is really special. We’ve never had all of thme here before. There’s probably 35-40 people here. It’s just been fun having them in the office. I had a chance to speak to them and talk about the vision of Clickfunnels and kind of behind the scenes of what happened when we first launched it and the ups and downs and all the craziness that kind of ensued during that part of the process. It’s been kind of fun.

And then Todd, who is my co-founder in Clickfunnels and partner, he’s actually staying at my house. Normally he stays at a hotel but we were like, back in the day when we were first getting started he would always fly out here to Boise and stay at our house, so we thought it would be fun for him to stay here. So it’s been fun every night staying up late talking with him about the whole process and all the craziness and reflecting on the last four years.

Clickfunnels had it’s four year birthday today, and it’s insane to see what has happened since it went live. From zero to 66,000 active members and all the other craziness in between.

Anyway it’s been cool and we’ve got a couple more fun days with everyone here. And then tomorrow actually, Brandon and Kaelin from Lady Boss are flying in and we’re doing something really fun. It’s something I think all of you guys should be doing with other people inside your community that you find that are smart as well. So we’re basically swapping consulting days.

So they’re doing a lot of cool things in their business operationally, from a traffic side and a couple of other things that I’m curious about and we’re doing a lot of cool stuff that they’re curious about. So I said, “How about we swap consulting days. So let’s do a day and I’ll consult you and you’ll do a day and you’ll consult me and we’ll just you know, not charge our normal fees and we’ll just have some fun.” He was up for it and I was up for it, so that’s what’s happening. So Thursday and Friday is going to be fun.

So Thursday, basically they’re going to be consulting me and my team, a lot into operational stuff as well as the traffic process and just things that they’re doing. And then we’ll flip the table on Friday, I’ll be consulting them and some guys on my team will be consulting people on their team. It’s just going to be really fun.

As we were planning this today, trying to figure out what we’re going to talk about, what are the goals we want to accomplish while they’re here? Brandon said something that was super profound that I want to share with you guys because I think a lot of people struggle because of information overload. We’re all getting a lot of information all the time, it’s always coming at us. And a lot of times I think that we think the key is more information.

But a lot of times what the problem is that information is what will strangle you and drown you. Too much information keeps you from actually getting the thing that you really desire. So that’s more so the problem than not enough information typically.

So what I told Brandon basically, “This is what I’ve been geeking out on for the last three or four months, this topic. This is what I’ve been studying from and everything. So I understand all the content, I don’t need to be retrained on that. But I need to figure out how to plug it into to what we’re doing.”

And he Voxed me back and said something cool. He said, “Yeah, we went through the same processes and learned the content, but then you have to figure out how to plug the content into your context. You have your own company, you have a context of what you’re doing, what you’re trying to accomplish, where you’re going, what your goals are, what your motivations, what your team looks like. There’s this whole foundational framework, this context of what you’ve created. So when you look at the content it’s not so much like, I need to take all the content and understand it and memorize it and absorb it all.”

Which is what they teach us in school right, which I think is the reason why a lot of us entrepreneurs and people struggle in school because we can’t remember it all. Because we’re looking for, what’s the stuff in the context of what I’m looking for? What I desire? My goal is to blah, blah, blah, and we struggle with school because all this information is coming at us and we’re like, “How does this fit in the context of what I’m trying to accomplish, I’m to….” Whatever your thing is. It doesn’t fit into the context of what you’re trying to accomplish.

And that’s why a lot of us struggle there, whereas if you get us outside the school system and we have a context of, I’m trying to grow a company, or I’m trying to become an athlete, or I’m trying to make money. Whatever your thing is. And then when the information comes to you, you’re like, “Oh this is how it fits into the context of what I’m doing.” Then learning becomes fun. That’s when I became obsessed with learning and you know spent, literally over a half a million dollars in 2 ½ years on courses and training products, and programs, and seminars, and masterminds and everything because I have this context. I’m sucking out the best content from everybody and finding the pieces that fit what I’m trying to do.

I got really good at absorbing this information and looking at stuff like, “Whoa, that’s amazing.” But I’m not ready for that so I put it on a shelf, plug it over here, plug it over here, and the pieces, the gold I needed I could grab and put it in the context of what I was doing and it would drive it farther, faster.

And I think what’s interesting, I think why I’ve become a good coach over the last ten years or so is because I’ve done that so much. I’ve absorbed information and put all these things in my mental shelf. Like, okay that was amazing, but I’m not ready for it. So I’ll put it somewhere. Or that’s amazing, but it doesn’t fit my business. That’s amazing but….

And I’ll kind of shelve them in different places, and it’s cool when I start coaching people, if anyone’s ever coached with me one on one, you’ve seen I’ll be in the process of coaching someone and all the sudden I’m like, “Oh my gosh, okay. Eight years ago I read this course, it was by this guy. It was like this section of the book, this was the topic. I don’t remember all the details but I do remember that the answer you’re looking for is right there.”

And people are like, “How do you do that?” and I’m like, “I don’t know, it’s just there because I read it, I learned it, I just stored it away because it didn’t fit in my context but I had it in my reserves to be able to find it again.”

Anyway, I digress, that wasn’t the point of this podcast. The point is for you, as you’re learning, you have to first build out your context, your framework. What is it you’re actually trying to accomplish, right? Because you don’t have that, all the content just becomes information overload.

There was somebody recently, not recently, a couple of years ago that was in one of my hiring coaching programs, I’m not going to mention their name or business or anything because it doesn’t matter. But what they struggle with is that they would learn this stuff, and then everything coming at them, they were trying to like, they didn’t have the ability to filter it into the context of what they were trying to achieve. So I’d be talking about, “You could do a tripwire funnel or a product launch funnel.” I’d be talking about ten different options of cool stuff you could do, and then they go home and they’re trying to do all ten funnels at once because I had said it.

I’m like, no, those are potential options but its not what’s best for you. “What’s best for me?” I’m like, “I don’t know, I don’t know your business. What’s the context of your business?” You gotta look at it through that lens and you realize here’s the context I’m trying to accomplish, then you can take information and be like, “Cool, this is for me. This isn’t yet for me, I’m gonna put it on the shelf. That piece I can immediately apply. I immediately can do that.”

I’ll go to mastermind groups or seminars and I’ll sit there for 3, 4, 5, 6 days taking notes on all the stuff that is awesome, but then when I’m looking for I’m like, “Okay, what’s the pieces that tonight I can plug into my machine I’m building, or thing that I have…” That’s the key.

So for you guys I want you to understand, your real goal, your real job in this process and learning and being coached is to be able to filter out the content and be able to figure out how to plug things into the context of what you’re creating. And it’s a hard thing at first, because a lot of times you don’t know. And especially at the beginning you’re so excited, there’s so many ideas and concepts and it’s so fun right. But if you chase them all, nothing will ever get done.

Anyway, hopefully that helps some of you guys. Some of you that feel information overload. It’s funny, every time someone tells me they have information overload, I’m so confused. I don’t have empathy, I can’t relate to that, it doesn’t make any sense to me. “I have information overload, there’s so much stuff.” I’m like, “What? It’s not that much stuff. There’s a lot but you don’t have to do it all. It’s just, don’t think of it as a school where you have to memorize and regurgitate everything. You don’t. All you have to do is sift through it. Sift and sort and be like, boom, that’s gold today. I’m going tonight and doing that in a hotel room before I come back tomorrow because it’s done. This one’s gold for next week. This one’s gold for next month, and these ones I’m putting on the shelf and when I’m ready for that, they will reappear.”

That’s how I look at things. So those of you guys who are struggling with information overload, think about that. Your job is to take the content and then be able to transition it into your specific context. And if you don’t have context yet, that’s the thing you’ve got to be figuring out. That’s the good thing to hire a coach for, hiring a mentor, joining our coaching programs, or hire a consultant or something to give you the context of okay, this is the framework of what you need to do.

As soon as you get the framework done, then it’s just fun. You’re trying to implement and improve and add things and tweak things and make it better and even more exciting all the time. But without the framework, without the context there, something you’re running towards, it gets really hard.

That’s why school sucked for me, I had nothing I was….I was in school so I could wrestle. I’m learning all this stuff that didn’t help me wrestle, but I had to learn it to be able to wrestle. It was so confusing for me. As long as I got a C I could wrestle. So I was like, I just have to understand enough of this to get a C, and that was my context, which is a horrible way to go through school. Whereas if I was like, hey, I gotta reteach this or relearn, or whatever those things are.

For example, a good example is the Book of Mormon podcast. Some of you guys know I launched a podcast about the Book of Mormon, in fact, if you want to see it, go to bookofmormonchallenge.com. So the whole thing is like, I’m using this as a, I’ve tried to read scriptures and stuff my whole life, which they’re typically harder to read books. And when I used to read them and it’s like, “oh.” Even if I have this framework I’m trying to plug things into, this context of how it fits my life, you can find those things. You’re like, “Cool, I need to do this to make my life better.” And you plug things in.

But for me it was like, the reason why I started the podcast, I was like if I know that podcast is me digging through this section, these verses, these chapters and I got to find the gold and then find the story that gets people excited by it, now I have this context and this framework where it’s like, cool. Now I’m reading this chapter, but now I’m going to read all the commentary and all these things to find out what’s the most exciting thing I can bring to the table for this verse, this section, this whatever. Now how do I tell this story in a way that fires people up?

And now it makes reading the scriptures alive to me again. And it’s exciting, it’s fun. So for me it’s like, one of the things I had to do for that. So yeah, I hope that makes sense. That is the goal, I just wanted to share that with you guys tonight. That’s what I’m going to be doing with Brandon and Kaelin, the last two days of this week, which I’m pumped for.

So if you don’t know the context yet, and you’re not sure, go find someone, swap consulting days, have a day with them helping you figure out your context, you spend a day helping them figure out their context, build out a framework of what you’re trying to accomplish, and then go in there and start consuming the content, and then plugging those pieces into your framework. And that’s the magic.

Alright, I’m going to bounce, I’m going to bed. It’s 11:30 at night. I appreciate you guys listening, hope you enjoyed this and you got some good ideas, and we’ll talk to you guys soon.

Who is Russell Brunson?

Over the past 10 years, Russell has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, popularized the concept of sales funnels, and co-founded a software company called ClickFunnels that helps tens of thousands of entrepreneurs quickly get their message out to the marketplace.